stained glassshrine, planned by Louis IX

(Saint Louis) to display the treasure it held :

relics relating to the Passion of Christ -

fragments from the crown of thorns, from

the cross, from the spear and the sponge

of the crucifixion. It was a collection that

had been toughly negotiated with the

Byzantine emperor (in fact an occidental

since the capture of Constantinople by the

crusaders in 1204 and a master under

supervision of the Oriental Roman Empire).

It was a political treasure making the

Palais of the king of France into a place

with as much weight in Christendom as

Constantinople, Rome or Jerusalem. Since

Clovis, the new Constantin, and until

Napoleon I, the masters of France considered

themselves the agents of the Western

Roman Empire, Which brought about the

typically French way of seeing Paris as the

new Rome, a beacon for the West.

The cathedral also bears witness to

this : first through its plan with double

aisles, designed by Childeric I, Clovis's

son and successor. His ambition was to

echo the Roman basilicas - St Peter's,

St Paul's beyond the city, St John Latran (the cathedral

of Rome). This ambition was upheld and outdone by the

Capetians at the time of the Gothic rebuilding of the building that we

now see : with double aisles, of course, but also vaulted and very lofty. This Notre-Dame

Cathedral, started in the 12^th century, took the place of two earlier churches.

One, the old cathedral of Childeric, which was dedicated to Saint Stephen (itself

transplanted from the original site in the Forum and for which Saint-Etienne-du-Mont,

now a parish church, bears memory) and two, a sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin

(Notre-Dame), which was situated behind it and took its place for the sake of its name.

Snobbery rules : in the scale of the sacred, the Madonna was closer to Christ than Saint

Stephen and more or less as well placed as the Apostle Peter, the evangelist Paul or

John the Baptist.